


I Must Be Mad

by HypotheticalWoman



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M, Post-Movie(s), Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 14:20:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/914215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HypotheticalWoman/pseuds/HypotheticalWoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt and Hermann are dealing with the after effects of the drift and they’ve been in each other’s heads, so they know each other better than anyone else now. But they’re still THEM so of course they still infuriate each other and eventually one of them leaves.</p>
<p>And then they find out that they may consider one another to be the most irritating creatures in all creation and they can’t stand to be together but what they REALLY can’t BEAR is being apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Must Be Mad

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I have written for anything in quite some time, and the first one for AO3. Crit - both for the story and for site etiquette - is welcomed.

They say that drifting changes people.

In these days after the cancellation of the Apocalypse, you are definitely questioning that hypothesis.  
In a moment of temporary insanity possibly brought on by fear, adrenaline and the thought that one may as well do anything in these times when tomorrow was increasingly improbable, you had put on a makeshift headset built by the most irritating man you had ever met, and - _willingly_ \- jumped into both his brain and the brain of a mostly-dead alien monster.

If someone had asked you this time last month which you’d prefer to drift with, they would have to give you an hour or two to consider your answer.

You must have been mad.

_He’s_ mad… well, no, that’s not a pleasant word, even for unpleasant people, but he does have a lot wrong with him, you could feel it in his thoughts and in his mind, you now understand _why_ he acts like he’s the undiscovered king of the universe and then like he has forty-five minutes to discover the meaning of life in a pile of kaiju guts and then, later, like he has to shout as loud and as fast as he can in case people forget he’s there or decide he’s irrelevant. You now know what he does when you don’t see him for days (blessed days) at a time.

For a split second you were prepared to make allowances for him, because Newton Geiszler’s head is a horrible place to visit, you can’t imagine what it must be like to live there, and you had thought that since he’d, obviously, seen in your head, he might start considering your feelings too.

Again, you must have been mad.

The post-drift truce lasted about as long as it took for the celebrations to die down and the funerals to be over. You got word that the Shatterdome was going to be set up partially as a point to study the Rift in case the cancellation order hadn’t quite gone through, but mostly it would be a memorial centre and lab. Both you and Dr. Geiszler were being offered a fairly attractive sum to stay on and head the project, which would primarily be reverse-engineering the kaiju technology for human purposes, and adapting the Jaeger program tech for peacetime use.

So you stayed. You’d been here ten years. Your wife had been killed in a kaiju attack six years ago, you weren’t on exactly cordial terms with your father. It wasn’t as if there was really anything else out there except the lecture circuit, and you could still do that operating out of the Shatterdome. You’d had offers from various universities, but… no.

*

You must be mad.

You are acutely aware of this when you walk into the lab on the first ‘normal’ day - for a given value of normal, of course - and immediately an impact in between your shoulderblades almost knocks you off your feet. You turn around - your knee twinges just a little - and of course it’s him, already up to his elbows in dead kaiju.

‘Dr. Geiszler!’

‘Hi!’

He’s bloody to the shoulders. He’s deliberately slapped a bloody handprint in the middle of your back. You are _covered_ in kaiju blood, you _have_ to go and _change_ \- you _can’t_ go and change, he’d probably just do it again, but this is making your skin crawl. You shed the jacket with as much dignity as you can muster. Maybe you can clean it, or probably you’d always be able to smell the blood on it, perhaps it’s just a dead loss.

‘Dr. Geiszler-‘

‘For fuck’s sake, Hermann, you’ve been in my _head_ , why-‘

‘ _Dr. Geiszler_ , why did-‘

‘Oh, sorry, did I mess up your jacket? Sorry.’ He grins, and then turns up whatever god-awful music he’s got playing today (Alice Cooper, his memory in your head tells you, and you wish you didn’t know that) and goes back to dissecting a specimen the size of a small child.

You sigh heavily, and turn to the blackboard.

There’s a chunk of kaiju muscle tissue on the chalk box.

*

Throughout the day he is, if anything, worse than usual. He sings along to his horrible music to which you now know all the words. He leaves bits of kaiju in places where you are sure to find them. He interrupts just as much as he used to, only now he’s started doing it as you open your mouth. And he won’t stop touching you, especially if his hands are blue and glistening, despite all your efforts not to show exactly how much he’s bothering you, you’ve already changed twice by lunchtime.

You have seen inside his head, and it’s a terrible place, and you thought you’d make allowances for him, but this is clear - he doesn’t want your pity. Which is fine by you.

So the next time he interrupts you you raise your voice and talk on. Every time he comes close enough to touch you, you smack him in the shins with your cane. You keep a supply of latex gloves and sterile swabs in order to wipe the blood off your equipment, and every time he leaves a kaiju part in your half of the lab, you go to his half of the lab and drop one of his samples into the waste disposal.

Above all, you don’t look at him. You don’t talk to him unless he’s talking to - or at - you. And you most certainly don’t touch him, except with your cane when he comes too close.

You calculate that this should result in total mental breakdown on Dr. Geiszler’s part, a murder attempt, or both, in less than a week, but since the last thing you did at great threat to your life helped to save the world, why not try it again? Besides, you’re not going to let him _win_.

Part of you is aware that there’s something wrong with that thought, but it doesn’t matter, you can examine it later, assuming you survive.

*  
You come into the staff dining hall- previously the Shatterdome mess - to find that your calculations were off by several orders of magnitude. It’s sooner than you thought, and although Dr. Geiszler has neither broken down nor attempted to assassinate you, there has been a reaction already.

You hear the argument before you get there, and although it’s somewhat indistinct, a polyglot mix of three languages, it’s fairly clear who’s involved. Ms. Mori and Mr. Becket are talking to each other in Japanese, Dr. Geiszler’s arguing with Mr. Becket in English and Ms. Mori in German, and both of them are answering fluently but with no less volume.

If you could, you’d start running about now, but you can’t, so you enter the room in a high-speed hobble, and, in your best silence-you-imbeciles-the-lecture’s-starting voice, say, ‘DR.GEISZLER.’

Everyone turns to look at you - especially him, and there’s a triumphant little flash in his eyes, even though he looks like he’d really love to strangle you. You’d really like to back out, but you continue towards him with your best imitation of a stride (people get out of your way like terrified students, ah, those were the days). As you reach him, he opens his mouth, but you give him a vicious jab in the chest with the end of your cane.

‘Shut up, if that’s a conceivable possibility f-‘

‘Actually no, it’s not, I-‘

‘I said be _quiet_.’ You smack him on the shin again - right on one of yesterday’s bruises - and turn to the others. ‘Mr. Becket. Ms. Mori. I suppose one of you wouldn’t like to enlighten me as to what my errant colleague was doing?’

‘Since when was it _your_ business what I do?’ snaps Dr. Geiszler.

You sigh and roll your eyes, but Mr. Becket’s looking bewildered, so you decide to throw him a bone. ‘Dr.Geiszler, when did you begin bickering with Ms. Mori?’

Everyone starts talking at once. Mr. Becket is trying to defend his drift partner, who is insisting that she’s fine and Dr. Geiszler is snarling that you have no idea what you’re talking about about anything.

You wait, huffing impatiently through your nose, until at least he runs out of things to say. Except he doesn’t, he starts wrangling with Mr. Becket again, so you smack him with your cane again to make him turn on you.

‘OW! Fuck you! Will you stop _doing_ that?’

‘Excuse me, Mr. Becket, Ms. Mori.’ You glare at him, and note that he stares right back into your eyes. You can see hatred in every bloodshot molecule. ‘I hypothesize-’ He fake-yawns and starts making yap-yap motions with his hand, but you continue. ‘I hypothesize that, since I have stopped letting you take out your childish tantrums on me, you have simply transferred them onto somebody else. Most probably Mr. Becket. And frankly, I cannot see our dear Ms. Mori allowing that for a second.’

‘Can we go now?’ says Mr Becket awkwardly.

‘I was never stopping you,’ you say.

They leave, and there’s just you and Dr. Geiszler, in the middle of the dining hall, with everybody staring. He’s clapping slowly.

‘Excellent hypothesis, Doctor Gottleib, you know what, I think you might get the Nobel prize for psychology, oh wait there isn’t one. Too bad. You’ll just have to go back to adding up instead.’

You don’t give him the satisfaction of a reply. Instead you turn your back on him and go to get your lunch.

That was the idea, anyway. He grabs you by the arm and wrenches you around - the sudden pain in your leg makes you grunt but it’s worth it when you see him take a sudden, sharp breath. No time to think about it, though, because he’s snarling into your face. ‘I was _talking_ to you.’

‘And I. Wasn’t. Listening,’ you reply. ‘But if you must have an answer-‘

‘Go on, give me your worst.’

‘Not here, everyone is staring. You might need an adoring audience, but personally I have considerably less vainglory and would rather let these people eat in peace.’

‘Fine.’

He stomps out of the room and you do not follow. Instead, you go and get your tray, and find a table, and sit down.

Before long, you’re interrupted. He’s practically incandescent, but you merely raise an eyebrow at him and smack his hands out of the way with your cane when he tries to flip your tray.

‘I’m hungry, Dr.Geiszler,’ you say. ‘Besides, I don’t know why you’d think I’d have anything to say to you. Leave me alone.’

He stands there, simmering, for a minute, and you ignore him. Then, just when you think he’s about to stop staring at you and go away, he flips your tray full of spaghetti and meatballs into your lap with one smooth motion and leaves the dining hall laughing his idiotic head off.


End file.
